Connect What is your favorite type of art to create?

Portraits fascinate me. I don't see people. I see stories. Stories of survival, of laughter, of camaraderie, of generations of habits and coping and dysfunction and survival intentionally and unwittingly passed down. We are copers. Some survive, some maintain, some aspire. So many stories. They say the story is behind the eyes...yes, but it's also in the way they stand, sit, dress, lean into the chair, where they gaze. People are intriguing. You can't paint a portrait without loving the subject.

Where do you find inspiration?

I am inspired by watching people. I love to sit at an outdoor cafe and people watch. The gaits, the socks, the hair, the lilts, the way one laughs. Or stares into the void. I also love painting landscapes on location. It's worship to me. Landscapes are like dessert...you can't help but marvel at the wonder of nature. You feel small and big and special all at once. I love the tactile feel of pushing, laying paint on a canvas-- I feel life in my heart, shoulder, arm, wrist. I am alive. Responding.

What would you do with $25,000?

I'd love to paint four portraits of people who'd never think they relate to one another, but yet they are more connected and similar than they'd ever guess in their survival, their secrets, their coping, their joys. Four people of vastly different backgrounds and neighborhoods, vocations, skin, hair, cars, homes...yet four portraits depicting their similarity, their common-yet-unadmitted similarity. Wouldn't that be a blast painting these and seeing them side by side? : )